veBINAR Mastering the Art and Science of a Life changing Exit

Let's, let's rock and roll. Jeffrey, greetings from from the west coast, from the San Francisco area. Great to see you and hello everybody. Welcome to today's Venducks webinar. I'm Andrew Miller, one of the partners at the Vendex Group where we focus on helping clients to grow their sales leadership capital. I'm really thrilled to have Jeffrey Feldberg as our guest today and I'll let him introduce himself in a second. Today's webinar topic is Mastering the Art and science of a Life Changing Exit. In a nutshell, Jeffrey is the co founder of Deep wealth and the host of the Deep wealth podcast. He transformed a struggling startup once run from his parents attic into a nine figure liquidity event as a post exit entrepreneur. In this webinar we'll explore his journey through relentless setbacks to mastering the art and science of his life changing exit and how his experience can help early stage founders. Today, with 90% of exits failing and most entrepreneurs leaving 50 to 100% of their value behind, Jeffrey reveals the insider strategies and mindset shifts that helped him defy the odds and how Deep wealth equips others to do the same. So we'll, we'll dive into this topic in a second, but first a couple of quick housekeeping notes. We'll keep everybody muted for the duration of the webinar and then there's a Q and A at the end. So you can either then use the chat function in zoom to submit your questions or just feel free to open up your mics and engage with Jeffrey directly at the end of the webinar. The webinar today is being recorded and it'll be available later today on our site and on YouTube and our socials. Jeffrey, greetings. Welcome. Great having you with us today. Thank you for your time. I know it's a big question, but tell us a little bit about your journey, where you are today, and a little bit about Deep wealth just to set the stage in the context here.

Sure. Firstly, Andrew Henning. Thank you so much for having me. And hello and welcome. Love Vibinar. Love that take on the Vendux webinar. Vibinar. Great to see everyone here. I'll share my story. Before I do that, I want to throw one thing out there just to set the record straight. Nothing was smooth, nothing went to plan. And I jokingly say if I had a dollar for every mistake I made, you'll hear the nine figure exit deal and everything else turned around. But if I had a dollar for every Mistake that I made, I would not have needed my exit. So just to put that out there, it was not a straightforward path. I started an e learning company right out of my MBA program. I had no money, no experience, no team, was literally struggling forward, failing forward, being honest about it. And the saving grace was my grit and my passion. It kept in the game long enough that the company became successful. When the company became successful, we got on the radar of a whole number of different parties. One of them was a Fortune 10 company knocked on the door, gave us a seven figure offer. Family and friends excited. Jeffrey, you can move out of the parents attic. Look, it was all worth the while, but I said no. And when I said no, it wasn't because I'm not really a numbers guy and I couldn't do this analysis. It was just a gut feeling. Sorry for all you number folks out there. I just knew something felt off and we could do a whole lot better. Family came back, said Jeffrey, we knew you're crazy now you're certifiable. You could have said yes to that and had a nice life ahead of you, but said no. And myself, my business partners went back at it and in that process created, we use all these fancy terms today, but effectively created the Deep wealth mindset roadmap what we now do in the 90 day deep wealth mastery program. And less than two years later, it was a different buyer. We accepted a nine figure exit deal and quite openly, Andrew and Henning. The story should have ended there. Once that was done, word got around of what was going on and started getting some phone calls, some emails, hey Jeffrey, heard what you were doing, how'd you do it? We had this experience, that experience. And just in my naivete I thought that we were the exception, not the rule. In my mind I thought who would ever want to rip off an entrepreneur who would come in and Give an entrepreneur 7 figures when the company's worth 9 figures? We work so hard, we change lives, we change the community, we really make a difference out there. I soon began to see that, wow. Actually we were the rule, not the exception. And when I started to look into this, the statistics were shocking. I learned that up to 90% of business exits fail. Think about that for just a moment. So nine out of ten business exits fail. And think about the time, the money, the effort. And as we say at Deep wealth, you would be better off going to your favorite casino and just blowing all that money right then and there. You'll have a whole lot more fun than going through an exit process. In terms of doing that. And even worse, I learned that of the quote unquote winners, the successful exits, most business owners are leaving 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket. And by the way, when I say buyer, it could just as easily be investor and vice versa. It's really one in the same thing in terms of what's going on there. And so, hearing horror story after horror story from my fellow entrepreneurs, brothers and sisters, I went back to one of my business partners and I said, we've got to do something about this. Let's take what we did. Which really wasn't for public consumption. I mean, it wasn't any big secret, but it was in here or effectively chicken scratch. I could have been a doctor. My family tells me my handwriting is so messy. I shared, why don't we bring out what worked for us? Let's reverse engineer the mistakes that we made. As successful as it was, we made mistakes. And so that's exactly what we did. We put it for you in a done for you system. But it really, it's there for best practices which go across industries. And entrepreneurs can now not just level the playing field, they can tilt the playing field to their advantage. And so for me, it was coming out of retirement, if you will, to really make a difference for entrepreneurs, because the skills to start a business are different than the ones to grow it, and they're certainly different than the ones to either raise capital or to sell it. And that's really my mission today. To change the social fabric of society to one entrepreneur at a time, one liquidity event, Two fancy words for either raising money or selling your business. One liquidity event at a time.

That's really interesting. So in a nutshell, the deep wealth service, is it a relatively customized, consultative kind of service that blends to a specific company situation, or is it a little bit more of a subscription, out of the box framework or methodology that just about any company could follow for similar outcomes?

Great question, Andrew. And big picture wise, when putting this all together, I took a step back as an entrepreneur and I said, what drives me nuts as an entrepreneur, what drives me nuts is having advisors come on board that make me completely dependent upon them. It's a polite way of saying their hands on the checkbook all the time. And so one of the missions that we had was, okay, let's teach the fisher person how to fish that, hey, you can learn how to fly the plane. It doesn't mean you're going to be fixing the entertainment system. When it goes down or serving the meals. But as the pilot, you've got to know, big picture wise, where we're going and are we on track and how are we going to get the team to be where we all need to be to get the best kind of result. And so some of the biggest criticisms of what we're doing, the nine step roadmap, deep wealth mastery, is that we're all best practices. And the naysayers will often say, well, if you're a best practice, it's way too general. It simply isn't going to work. And actually it's the opposite because we are best practices that goes across industries. We've had manufacturing companies, SaaS, companies, high tech, low tech, you name it, startups, because it's best practices across industries. That's why it works. Now, we're not going to be foolish enough to say, oh, we just assume everything and we know your business and how to run it. We can give you, though, the framework, the questions, how to look at it in terms of your company, of where you are now and where you need to be. And Andrew, one of the questions I'll put to you and everyone who's listening to us right now, seven figures to nine figures. One of the questions people often ask, okay, Jeffrey, what did you do to go from seven figures to nine figures? Were you buying all kinds of companies in less than 24 months that you said you got that exit deal? Were your growth rates going off the charts? And the surprising answer is actually, no. It was the same company. Our growth was the same, all the ratios were more or less the same. So it begs the question, well, what was the difference? How did you go from seven figures to nine figures if you were the same company? And it's a boring answer. It's an answer that most people don't want to hear. This is not a magic bullet by any stretch. In one word, it's preparation and preparation. What I love about preparation, it's the gift that keeps on giving. So if I look at Jeffrey, seven figure, Jeffrey, nine figure, what was going on. And yes, I'll put it out there, the buyer was effectively the wolf in sheep's clothing that came there. But I need to take some responsibility as well, because as a business owner, when I got approached, I was too busy running the business. I had no thought towards selling the business or raising capital or anything else like that. But I got this knock at the door and next thing I know, I'm showing up and I'm meeting the buyer and the board and all kinds of questions are being asked and quite openly. I just was not prepared. And so the answers that I gave, what I didn't do, what I did do, all that went in there to create, let's call them opportunities. On the buying side, why would a buyer be any different than us? If I'm looking to buy something for the company or for myself personally, what I want to do, I want to find the best possible value. I don't want to pay the highest. Let me find the best possible value. Can I get some kind of a deal out there, there? Why would it be any different for a buyer? It simply isn't. So I gave them all the ammunition that they needed by showing up unprepared versus the Jeffrey nine figure deal. Different story. Showed up prepared, knew what to do, knew what not to do, and all the key things that they were looking for to give confidence in a bright and prosperous tomorrow. And that made all the difference.

That, that resonates in, in so many ways. I mean, preparation is the key to just about anything. Preparation, training, practice, whatever you call it, you can't, can't make a wonderful meal with a bunch of ingredients you just throw together. It's like, yeah, okay. So it also resonates in our business where our sales leaders go, go into so many different kinds of businesses and they see patterns that, that are similar. I mean, every business thinks they are unique. Nobody else has these kinds of problems. But when you see enough of these, you, you can, you see patterns. So what, what are some of the most common blind spots that you see with, with entrepreneurs, businesses?

Well, why don't we start, Andrew, with what you and Henning do? And for everyone who's listening, I assure you we didn't really speak about this beforehand. This is just off the cuff here. One of the biggest challenges, and I was really no different. The business owner, the entrepreneur is the business and the business is the entrepreneur. And so from a buyer's perspective, that's a big red flag. Effectively, the business doesn't run without the business owner. So on my podcast, give it a shameless plug, the default podcast, I've had buyers come on, many buyers come on, and they all more or less say the same thing when we're buying a company, when we're investing a company, I don't want a second full time job, otherwise known as running the company that I just bought, because the owner rode off into the sunset and the company doesn't run without the business owner. That's a huge red flag. And what buyers want to see and what every company forget, a liquidity event. If the company can't generate revenue, can't have revenue growth, get new sales without the entrepreneur. That's a big problem. And in the deep wealth community, when business owners are coming in for the first time, one of the questions we ask, does the business run without you? Are you the one leading the charge for all the sales because you're the founder, you're the entrepreneur, you know what's going on, or do you have a professional sales organization? Do you have a professional leadership team? There's a lot of hemming and hawing and a lot of excuses. Sadly, the short answer is no for most business owners. It doesn't run without them. So much depends on them, including in the sales process. And that's one of the key things as a buyer, what I'm looking for, okay, once the business owner is out of the picture and asks, believe it or not, there will come a point where you're out of the picture. Even if you still own part or some of your company, the new owner is going to want to see, okay, the sales is independent of the entrepreneur. It's going to continue to grow. Maybe I can put some capital into this or some additional resources into this that I can accelerate that velocity, that growth. But the foundations are already there. And so for most business owners, the biggest mistake that they're making is they're simply showing up. And as a business owner, if you're saying, jeffrey, don't speak to me about my business exit, it's two years away, it's 12 years away, it's 22 years away. I will start to prepare when I speak to an investment banker. I've got some bad news. Do not shoot the messenger. You're done before you've even begun. Preparation takes a lot of time. You need to find those skeletons in the closet. Forget a liquidity event that will put you out of business, if you don't know what they are and they can just out of nowhere, boom, you're done. Or find what we call those beautiful, hidden Rembrandts in the attic. These are the areas that you are world class in with your business. This is what sets you apart from the competition. You may not even know that you have them, but you put them out for public display. You'll keep your existing clients, you'll get new clients. Future buyers or investors will love this. When you can show, hey, I'm world class. I'm the only one that's doing this. That puts a premium on two fancy words. Enterprise value. The Value of your business, what your business is worth, that can really make a difference.

Yeah, the business is not the business owner and the owner is not the business. So you talk to so many of these business owners who, who have the spirit and the intention to sell, to exit, to realize value, but they may not be ready. There's too much of the business that revolves around the owner today, but they want to make that leap. Does the zebra change its stripes? How often do you see business owners really being able to put into place processes and systems and methodologies and, and brand value that that creates value beyond them?

Absolutely. It can be done. And that's really big picture wise. Going back to what I said earlier, teaching the fisher person how to fish, that's what we do. And so I'll share a quick story with you. I'm going to change the name because privacy is paramount with us. A business owner, I'm going to call him Alex came to us. Jeffrey, I've got an eight figure offer in my hand right now. Just found out about you. What do you think? I said, oh my goodness, Alex, just take the offer. Had we spoken before you got the offer, maybe we could have done something. But you've got the offer. I can't be the one to tell you what to do or not to do. This is your financial freedom online. This is your independence online, your legacy. If the offer feels right for you, by all means, you should probably take it. Conversation ended. And that's really where I thought, that's the end of the story. It was a few weeks later, Alex called back. Jeffrey, you know what? I thought about it. I said no to the offer. Oh, wow, okay. So he said no to eight figures. Yeah, I said no to eight figures. Why? Well, I feel I can do better. This buyer came to me and thought about what was being said. I've listened to your podcast, gone through some of your materials. There's just some things in there that I didn't like. I want to see what I can do. And, you know, worst case scenario, it's an amazing business. I love the business. I can continue to run it until another opportunity will come around. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. I've made my piece. Can you help me? So Alex went through the program, started to put in place the structural changes created, the narratives, all the kinds of KPIs that we're talking about, the sales organization, all those different kinds of things. And it's now, as we record this, I want to say about five months, give or take. And a nine figure deal was reached. Alix kept a good portion of the company slightly under the majority of the company, but still enough. And should there be a second kick at the can where it was a private equity company that came in and purchased Alex's company, when they go to sell it, there could be a very good likelihood that Alex will approach 10 figures when you combine both of them. Now, is that a guarantee for everyone who goes through the program that's going to happen to them? Of course not. You know, as you hear in the commercials, results are different and they're going to vary. It's fairly typical though of what we see in terms of business owners coming back out of the program with a different set of lenses. They they're excited again about the business. Oh my goodness. I finally feel like I did when I started the business. I love this. This is so much fun. I now I'm going to take it to a whole different level because I have the tools, the mindset to do so.

So preparation, you say? Preparation is the gift that keeps on giving. So how does getting ready early not just help with an exit, but actually makes the business stronger?

Sure. If I were to take the nine step roadmap that we created and boil it down to a very simple narrative, it's this. Every one of the nine steps is doing two things. You're finding those hidden skeletons in the closet. So what could be a hidden skeleton? Maybe there's some taxes that we're not aware of that we should be paying, but we're not paying. And my goodness, there's going to be a whole huge back tax and strain on the company. Maybe we're too heavy with a very few number of clients, we're too dependent on them or even suppliers, as we saw going back a few years. What happens to the supply chain when it goes under strain? Or maybe there's a new technology that's coming out, knock, knock, artificial intelligence, that if I don't do anything about this, it could put me out of business. Unless I know about this, I can now leverage it and put myself out of business and into a bigger business. So we're looking for the weak spots in the business. And again, forget the liquidity event. If I can find those skeletons that are holding back profits, holding back the growth, making me slower than I should be, and I can remove those, my profits go up, my ability to create a market disruption increases. The opportunity to keep my clients in and bring on newer clients, perhaps bigger clients, also increases. And then while I'm doing that, that's the glass half full? I'm finding the skeletons. I'm removing it. What I'm also doing okay. What am I really good at and how do I become better in those areas we don't believe at? Deep wealth. Find your weakest area. Focus on that. Forget everything else and improve it. Find your strongest area. How can you do more of that? And where you're not so strong, get some help for that. Bring in some people, some outside services that can help you with it. So by the time you're done, to the best of your abilities, you've removed the skeletons, or if you can't remove them, at least you know about them and you know how to deal with them. You've put your hidden Rembrandts out for public display and you've also created over 26 launch plans. Some are just for you, some are for you and the team. Some are for your post exit life, which is a whole other episode. I knew that's where I failed miserably. You would think it'd be beforehand. It was post exit, after the deal. I made some of the biggest mistakes. I just wasn't prepared for that. I didn't know what to do. You're focusing on all three of those areas with the launch plans to make sure that to the best of your abilities, you can get it right. Nobody can time the market, but we can time when we do go to market. And I am hesitant to even bring up Covid. Everyone's gonna throw the eggs and tomatoes at me. A terrible time. But we saw the companies that were prepared. Wow. Who would have thought that during a worldwide pandemic lockdown, everything else, some companies got the deal of a lifetime that they would never have gotten even during normal times because they were prepared.

Do you see a cutoff in any way either from a revenue point of view or other metrics in terms of the size of the company where there's this, the tipping point, you know, when you're half a million, a million, a couple million. Most businesses will be revolving around the owner, the entrepreneur, the founder. But at some point there's momentum, there's brand, there's a process, there's clients. Can you generalize any?

Yes, you can.

What are those cutoffs and metrics that you see that are the transition between a business, that is the founder and the founder, that's the business versus not sure.

And welcome to the human condition with what I'm going to share, especially in the world of mergers and acquisitions. And this is where the sales role and the sales leader plays such an important integral part in terms of what's there. And it's one of the biggest weak points for most companies from a buyer perspective. In the world of ma, you can take two companies. One is single digits, so we're Talking less than 10 million, one is over 10 million and they can have all the same ratios, but the company that has the 10 million will be worth more and sometimes significantly more than something with the human condition of it's over 10 million, I like that better. I'm going to pay more of a premium for that. It's likely it's no longer in startup mode and it's proven itself and it can really grow and get out there. But when you get into the eight figures and above, and obviously the higher you can go, the better. And let's take the position that unless perhaps you're a SAS company, for most other companies, there's some decent profits that are going along with that. Your enterprise value can significantly increase.

Are you involved with the investor community? Is there any part of what you do where part of your community are investors and they come to you with, you know, menu selections where they. Oh, Jeffrey, if you know of a business or you can find a business for, for us that looks like this, we'd be interested to engage. Is. Is that at all part of your business?

Well, we set our lines fairly clearly. Our loyalty are to the entrepreneurs, the business owners. We don't work with buyers or investors. We're neither investment bankers. We're not brokers, we're not valuators. We're really more like the Switzerland, if you will. With the loyalty, though, to all the entrepreneurs and business owners that are out there now, what's been interesting, when we speak to the investment community, to the buyers, it doesn't seem on the surface like they say this, but they actually say, you know what, we don't mind paying more money for a company that's gone through your process because I don't want to waste my time. And partway through diligence, I'm walking away because the owner wasn't prepared or it just didn't make sense. I'd rather get in, get out, have a terrific company and move forward with that. So as odd as it may seem, we have lots of synergies with buyers, even though we're sitting across, across the table for them. Because our commitment to the entrepreneur is, hey, let's give you the tools, let's give you the wherewithal. I don't want you taking any deal. I want you to find and Accept the best absolute deal that there is.

Yeah, you, you know very well that, that entrepreneurs have a, have strong instinct. They. There's so much that drives them from a gut, an instinct point of view. So in that way, they probably many think, I just, I will know when it's time to sell. So do. What's your perspective on that? And from what you've seen, is that a mindset and is it dangerous? Should they, you know, should they be thinking in different ways?

Don't shoot the messenger on this one. You're drinking your own Kool Aid to your detriment. You're putting your financial future, your legacy, your family, your team members, their family, you're putting that all at risk. Because what will happen is a buyer's going to come. That's why these unsolicited offers are so popular. They're going to put an offer in front of you with all these zeros. At the end of it, your ego is going to kick in. Wow, look at this. You're going to start imagining what you're doing with that money before you've even taken the next step after receiving that unsolicited offer. And no, you're not ready for that. There's so much that needs to go into it. Look, on the preparation side, if you focus on it and you did it all day long, you could do it in nine months. It's more closer to two years. So nine months or two years on the preparation side, this is before you ever step foot into the marketplace, before you ever phone up an investment banker. You're going through the nine different steps to put yourself in a position. So if you think, look, I'm going to be ten years away, so nine and a half years from now, I'm going to put a note in my calendar, start preparing. It's too late. Or, yeah, let the buyer come to me. I know my competition. This is another fallacy that as entrepreneurs, we believe. We believe that we know who the buyer is going to be. Yeah, it's going to be my competition. I know them. We're on somewhat friendly terms and we'll just craft a deal. After all, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a business owner. I know how to do negotiations. I do deals all day long. I can do this wrong. It's a different world. Buyers are honing their craft all day long, every day. They have an army of very sophisticated, highly priced M and A lawyers around them, analysts, CFOs, you name it. And just showing up on your own, you're outflanked you're outnumbered, you're outmaneuvered. And this is before we're starting, never mind getting into the liquidity event.

Yeah. So I'm going to, in a minute, I'm going to open up the floor one more for the moment, Jeffrey.

So.

To build a business, as you would point out, the skills to build a business and then to sell a business and realize value are very different. If you could summarize the skills to sell the business, how you summarize those.

The skills to sell a business, it's a completely different mindset than it is running a business. It's about how do I not create a I win, you lose, you lose, I win a zero sum game. It's not even how to create a win win, it's how do you create a win win, win how to separate yourself from the business. How do you actually master the both the art and the science of thinking like a buyer. In fact, in step three, future buyer, one of the things that we do, we do a deep dive, believe it or not, into psychology and into the studies that were done on storytelling and narratives. Again on the podcast, I've had valuators, some very big name valuators that have come on and valued most of the big companies that you would know and they've said right in the podcast, Jeffrey, before I look at the financial statements, I want to hear the narrative of the company because 80% of the value that I'm going to come up with is coming from the narrative. So I want you to think about that. 80% is coming from the narrative. And they go on to say, yes, the other 20%, of course you need to have the financials in place and it has to make sense and they all have to be above board and everything else has to check out. But that's only 20%. How excited are you getting about my narrative? And so everyone who's listening right now, let me ask you a question and I want you to be honest with yourself. If I were to ask you right now, without any preparation, what makes your company special? Are you going to tell me? Well, our customers love us. Our service is world class. We have the best customer service. Our clients are really happy. And for most business owners, no judgment. That's what we say. That's what the seven figure offer Jeffrey was saying. Hey, Jeffrey, what makes you special? Oh, our clients love us. We're the golden child in the industry and we do such great things. Things. I didn't know how to speak that language. I didn't know how to think like they think. Why would I? I was busy running my business. I had no really thought or focus on that. But when we can stop that and when we know what to say, how to present that, what not to say. And again, this is on the art side of business. It's not going to show up in a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement or on the accounting side. But when we can master the art side of the business, that's where the magic really happens.

Yep. So any, any hands going up questions that anybody want? Yes, Henning?

Yeah, Jeffrey, thank you for everything you've shared. The question may be specific to service businesses. A lot of them struggle with what is called owner dependence, where own all the key processes are circling around the owner and that is generally perceived as something that is decreasing the value of the business. When you work with service businesses, what specific steps do you take to decrease owner dependence leading up to a sale?

Absolutely, Henning. Guilty as charged. Again, as successful as our deal was one of the things that we realized, and it was a little too late when we realized that the business was too dependent on myself, I had two other business partners, I had Steve, Wells and Waleska, and the three of us realized, hey, if we're not here, if we get abducted by aliens tomorrow, the business is going to be in trouble. So we put in place a team. When we did the deal, the buyer said, guys really like you and what you've done with the company and even the people that you have. We're going to have to lower your enterprise value though, because as great as your team is, they haven't been in place for three years or five years, we really want to see a solid track record. So as an owner and what we encourage within the program itself, it's not abdicating where. Okay, Henning, here you go. Good luck. And let's talk in a year and see how it is. We're delegating where we are essentially firing ourselves from what we're doing and finding people to come in who have the autonomy and the authority to really lead the company. And we actually encourage in the program and in the community. Henning, can you take, let's start small. Can you take perhaps a few days off? Can you take a week off? Can you take a few weeks off? Can you take a month off? Can you take a few months off and then come back and the business is not only standing, but it's actually better than when you left it? And a lot of that is, let's face it, in the sales role how are we going to be growing the company if it's not the owner who's out there, who's going to be speaking to the different prospects? And you have that authority and you've been there from the beginning and you can really make the difference. We take that and we take that same approach with the sales side to all different sides of the business. And it's interesting, Henning, because when we have people go into the deep wealth community and deep wealth master program, we'll ask the question, even though you may have a leadership team, are they in a position where they can make decisions without you? And more times than not, Henning, the answer comes back as no. The bigger decisions, they still have to run through me. And so as a business owner, we encourage you lose the golden handcuffs, fire yourself from the position, and it's okay if you bring on someone who's maybe 70% as good as you, 80% as good as you, because you know what? That's all that they're doing. That's their only focus as a business owner. I'm all over the place. I'm scattered. I'm here, I'm there, I'm really everywhere. Bring them in, give them the authority and act more like a board of advisor kind of role. You're there to mentor, you're there to coach, to help along. And sure, you'll step in from time to time as needed or in some of the bigger decisions to help them, but they're really leading the charge. And when that happens in transparency and you can really say it does run without me, I don't need to be in the business. I choose to be there because I enjoy it. But I'm now using my time to look in new areas that we can grow or create a market disruption on a new problem that I found that it was there, but I didn't see it before because I have all this free time. That's really where as owners we all should be.

Thank you.

Great question. Dan, did you have a question? Okay, anybody else? For the moment, I'll take.

I need it. I'll do a question.

Go, go first.

Or a comment.

I'm.

I'm really fascinated by this because.

I.

Work with companies that want to exit and they're not ready because they can't, you know, they can't sell their company for any amount of money that they need in order to continue their lifestyle. And so do you run into that like they've got to do something with their business if they think they're going.

To.

Sell the Business or, you know, liquid, you know, liquidated some way. I know that's a long question, but.

So if you had to ask that question again in a sentence or so, what. What would you be asking? What, what are you saying? Are business owners how they handle? They know they have to sell it at one point to continue the lifestyle that they have. How are they doing that or where are you going with that?

So I get a client who's underwater and of course he can't sell the business and wants to. And so he hires me to come in and change the way they do business and then sells the business. Do you, do you find that these companies need a different way of operating in order to be able to go through the. The exit?

Dan, the short answer is yes. Yeah, no, it's a great question. And what you're doing is a large part of that. You're coming in, I presume, on the sales side. On the sales leadership side.

Yes.

Helping them rethink that and put some new strategies, KPIs, all those different kinds of things in place that they're finally starting to get some revenue in. We need to have some revenue to grow and get out of debt into profits. That's a part of it, Absolutely. In terms of going from where we are to where we want to be. But at the same time, if you go back to the start, when Andrew and I were talking, one of the things that I said was, forget a liquidity event, those skeletons in the closet. So you're finding one of the skeletons is, hey, we don't have a sales process that's replicable outside of the owner, or there just isn't a sales process anymore. We've just been relying on the same old clients and we're not really growing. That's one skeleton. But when we start to look under the hood and find the other skeletons, that's where we can make some significant changes day over day that can add up to massive results that can not only put us in not only a better position, the company's going to not only be here tomorrow, but the day after, the month after, the year after, and for many years when we begin to do the right things. And then value is also increasing. So a long winded answer. The short answer is yes. When you know where to look and what to do.

That's me.

Okay, perfect. Jeffrey, a couple of times you've mentioned the subject of sales and sales processes and sales organizations. So when you're dealing with Companies in the 10, 15, $20 million range, how often do you See that the world of sales in their organizations are one of the problems versus other things. Well, you know, whether it's product or the supply chain or their brand or their. Their dependence on the CEO and the owner. What is that perspective?

I want to say 100%, and if not 100%, it's 99.9% of the time. There's issues on the sales side. And if you take a step back for a moment as a startup, the sales that I have, the people that I have that are doing that, they're probably okay to do that. But as the company begins to grow, the needs, the marketplace, everything is changing. And I know as an entrepreneur myself, one of the toughest things for me as an entrepreneur, particularly for my E Learning company, and I'm no different than any other entrepreneur. The people that I had at the beginning, they didn't have the skill set to take the company to the next level. And when the company got to the next level, some of the same people there, unfortunately, they didn't have the skill set to take it to the next level. And it's particularly on the sales side as well, is where we see it the most. Because when we get to a certain size, when we scale, we've likely done a fairly good job in that area. But now it's time to go into bigger markets. New markets is a different skill set. It's a different experience to be able to go there. And so even though, again, same company name as we go to different echelons in terms of revenue, it's a different skill set, it's different strategies to keep that growth going. And now we're up against much bigger competitors who have a bigger wallet perhaps than we do. More resources, more experiences. We better have the right team in place to help us with that, that we don't get put back into the minor leagues when we're now in the majors.

Question. Do you find that some of these CEOs, they want to go to the next level, but that next level is a different business. And so that the practices and.

Processes.

That at the lower level are insufficient to get them to the next level and operate that business? I see that all the time.

And.

It'S, you know, you know, the old statement, what got you here is not going to get you there. Do you see that a lot?

Dan, you're spot on with that. And there's two choices at that point. As the owner, if I want to take the company to the next level, I need to look myself in the mirror and ask myself, do I Have the skill set. And even if I have the skill set, do I have the desire to put the time, the effort, the money, the resources into getting to the next level? And for a small set of entrepreneurs, the answer is yes, they do. And terrific. They're the minority. And for the majority, the answer is no. So my two choices now are, okay, I can look to bring on the right people. I'm going to invest and put the right people in place, get far more experienced people who are successful running larger companies that are going to get my company to that level and help me on the sales cycle with that. Or, okay, yeah, I could do that. But perhaps my time is really to hand over the reins, have somebody come in who's doing this all day long, and have them come and take it to the next level. So that's typically the two categories that we see. Back to the first category, Dan, which is typically. It sounds like where you're at. Yes. To do that, it's a different mindset and a different skill set. As you know, when you're coming in, can you do it? Yes. But it means very uncomfortably leaving behind some of the things that make you feel very comfortable, some of the things that you feel have worked until they don't. To stop that, to start new things that are going to really catapult the company over time into where you want it to be. Thanks.

That's great.

Thanks for that.

And one quick caveat, actually, I'm thinking of Leon, who went through the program. Afterwards, he came back, gave us a testimonial. He said, having gone through the nine steps and deep wealth mastery, I got to tell you, Jeffrey, the way we are hiring and the types of people that we are hiring, I never would have hired these people before because I just simply didn't have that mindset. I didn't have that big picture outlook that I now have an appreciation of, of where I need my company to go versus where I am. So, Dan, what you're sharing is huge. It's actually what we call step two. X factors. X factors are things that a company is world class. And one of the things, it's culture. What's culture? Well, it's the team that we have, the competition, their money. It can buy a lot of things. It cannot replicate. Culture. Culture, it's like a fingerprint. It's unique for every company. When we have the right team, the right people, the right leadership in place, then the culture will help the company get to the next level.

Thank you. Any others out there? Did you raise your hand? Lisa?

No, I scratched my head. I have a lot of questions. We don't have that much time left.

Just.

This is more just a curiosity question. But I'm curious, in the companies that you advise, do you see any trends in terms of owner involvement post acquisition? Like, I know, you know, in some instances there's clauses, you know, the owner sticks around. They're part of the business for a period of time. I'm just curious, like in the, you know, the morning after the exit, you know, what tends to be the most successful path forward?

I love that question, Lisa. It's actually going back to step three, future buyer. One of the things that we talk about before you ever speak to an investment banker, before you ever go to market, we call them deal points and no fly zones. So what must you absolutely see in that deal? Otherwise you're walking away from the deal table, or what must absolutely not be in the deal, because if it is, you're also walking away from the deal table. And so it really depends on the business owner. I'm not trying to sidestep this. We've seen business owners. Jeffrey. I want to be involved in the company. I actually, I don't want a lot of cash. I want to still keep a larger percentage of the company because they're going to grow it and I don't mind rolling the dice. And, yeah, I'll take some money off the table, but the rest, I want to see where that can go. And others are, hey, I want as much money out of this deal as I can possibly get. I want the minimal amount of ownership. I'm not even sure on day one if I want to have an active role in the company. And so when we know what that is, we can formulate. Okay, how do we need to structure the company that can actually support that if I don't have a team around me? And I'm saying I don't want to be in on day one. Well, there's a problem with that. We have a disconnect versus, hey, I don't want to be in the company. You don't really need me. Happy to be on the board. I have a team that's been running the company now for a number of years. The results speak for themselves. So it really depends on where you want to be, what your future looks like. And so for myself, as an example, myself and my business partners, because our company now was being taken to the next level and it was becoming a much larger corporation. We're entrepreneurs, and we knew that in that kind of environment that's just a bird in a cage. We would not do well in that. So one of our deal points was to find a buyer that was very open to having us not involved day to day to not having a large percentage of ownership after the deal we would have a smaller and we knew that. And when you know that upfront, it makes it so much easier. When you go through the liquidity event, the investment banker is able to communicate this buyers respect that they will self select themselves out of the process to save you time and then time and themselves time. So knowing your deal points, knowing you know, fly zones and coming out of here, I would encourage everyone, once we're done with today's call, take a few minutes out. Three to five deal points and three to five no fly zones. What are they? What must you absolutely see? What must you absolutely not see? And just to give you a few more examples, some of the business owners have said, my team, I treasure them so much. I do not want a buyer coming in who's going to fire them the next day. I want to make sure that if something were to happen to them, they have some kind of a package guaranteed or employment is guaranteed for a certain period of time. And the list just goes on and on of what's there. They have to keep the customers in a certain way. It's all very personal. But what is it for you? What does that look like? The only right answer is the one that feels right to you. Because what works for you may not and probably won't work for someone else. Thanks.

Great stuff. There are so many, I don't know, hundreds of Thousands, millions of SMBs across the U.S. so Jeffrey, we'll have a couple of follow up conversations on what we could do potentially together to go grab some of those as joint clients. Wrap up. Jeffrey, final words of wisdom. How do people get in touch with you, etc. And then we will, will break for the day.

Absolutely. If there's one takeaway from our time together, I want everyone to remember that when it comes to your financial freedom, your independence and even your legacy, and not necessarily in that order, whatever order works for you, please, please, please remember that the skills to exit your business are so different. You probably haven't practiced it that how can you win at a game you haven't played before? How can you win at a game that you don't even know what the rules are? So for yourself, for your financial freedom, for your family, for your legacy, take the time to begin that preparation. Do that today. There's an old saying the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is right now, today and start today a little bit. Day over day adds up to huge results. I'm going to put this in the chat. I put an email address out there. Success. We all want success. Successeepwealth.com send me an email that comes directly to me. Mention Andrew mentioned Henning. Mention then ducks when you do, what we'll do is I'll extend a complimentary strategy call with you to see where you're at, have you walk out with some actionable items that you can begin to do today to increase your profits and to look towards a future exit or liquidity event whenever that may be. And would love to speak with you and learn where you're at and how you can go from where I want to be now to here to over there and really welcome the outreach. And again successpal.com mention Ved Dun would love to speak with you.

That is really generous. Thank you very very much. Such a pleasure to chat today. The time has flown by. We will do around two over the next couple of months. Jeffrey, thank you. Thanks Huge thank you for your time, your insights and I know a lot of people here really appreciate hearing from you and we will see you soon.

Andrew, thank you. Anning, thank you. Keep on doing the incredible work that you're doing to help take companies to the next level with sales leadership. We need so much of that as entrepreneurs and everyone else. Hey, thank you so much. I know you're all busy. You could have been elsewhere doing something else. Thank you so much for taking part of your day and spending some time with us. I really heartfelt thank you. I really appreciate that.

Likewise. All the best.

Thank you Jeff.

Thank you Jeff.